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Volume 1 Chapter 2 Part 2

「But if you don’t have power, you can’t realize your ideals. And when the Grancrest will be completed, all the Chaos should disappear from the world, right? 」

 

「According to legend, that is how it is supposed to be, but we won’t know until it is truly completed. I believe that the person who completes the Grancrest should be someone like the Founding Lord, Leon. 」

 

Theo was surprised. He didn’t expect that name to come up.

 

Leon appeared during the age of extreme chaos that began about 2,000 years ago, and was a legendary hero who brought Chaos to the whole of Elam, and is said to be the first ruler to create a Crest out of Chaos. That is why he is called the Founding Lord.

 

「You can’t achieve your ideals without gaining power. It’s just as you said, Lord Theo. However, you must remember that most people tend to forget about their ideals altogether or have them extremely distorted as soon as they gain power. And even if some of the Lords received their Crests through heritage, most of them do not have any sort of ideals to begin with. 」

 

Theo nodded. If it was not like this, then the majority of Sistina Island would not have been turned into a monster-infested realm.

 

「I should be fine. It’s not like my own ideal is a great one in the first place. 」

 

「You do not consider your ideal to be a great one? 」

 

Siluca made a dubious face.

 

「Yes. A great ideal would be something like making all of the frontier areas with the high density of Chaos in them happy and free from suffering, wouldn’t you say? 」

 

「And you think like that because your ideal is concerned only with your small village? But precisely because of that, if only you do your best, it will be something that you can achieve on your own. However, there are countless examples of Lords who were working hard to quell the influence of Chaos in their territories and enrich the lives of their people only to be invaded by their neighbors and have their dreams and ambitions crushed. That is why in order to realize your ideals, a great amount of actual power is also necessary, Lord Theo. In order to not be invaded by our neighbors, we need to be strong both militarily and diplomatically. At the very least, we must rule the entire island of Sistina and belong to the victorious side of the coming Great War. 」

 

「We have to achieve one of these or both of them at once? That’s kinda crazy… 」

Theo shrugged his shoulders.

 

The current Lord of Sistina has the rank of a Viscount. Just how many monsters he would have to exterminate in order to accumulate such a rank by himself? Besides, it is not possible at this stage to accurately predict which side… no, who will win the war.

 

「My aim is to make it happen. 」

 

「What’s  is going on with you? 」

 

「You can get drunk on your own competence from time to time. 」

Siluca smiled.

 

Even though she was annoying most of the time, she was actually looking kind of cute when she was smiling, which is probably because that was a big difference from her usual expression. She herself said that she was 17 years old, but in Theo’s eyes, whenever she smiled she looked at least two times younger.

 

It might have been due to the way she was standing right now, but to Theo, she appeared like she was unexpectedly small. Her breasts looked like they were not all that big, and the overall cirves from her chest down to her waist gave off the feeling that they belonged to someone who was still young.

 

「If you will actually be able to achieve that, then you can feel free to boast about your abilities as much as you want for all that I care. 」

 

He could not even imagine what kind of magic a wandering Lord like him could use in order to become the Lord of Sistina, which was equivalent to taking a Viscount territory for himself.

 

「What, you do not think that I am serious about this? 」

 

Siluca said with dissatisfaction.

 

「So you were serious about it after all? 」

 

He was about to say that, but by no means did she look like she was lying or joking, so Theo closed his mouth and placed his hand aimlessly on the hilt of his sword.

 

Three years have passed since he left his hometown. Throughout all that time, Theo has lived and scraped by with just this one cheap sword alone.

 

Although he was a Lord who possessed his own Crest,  his main job was guarding the troops of soldiers, and the only people whom he fought against were the groups of bandits.

 

However, now he met Siluca, became a Knight thanks to her and got himself a castle and 3 villages to rule over. That current reality of his was not a lie. It was something genuinely real.

 

「So, even if I gain power, you want to say that all that I really need to do is to remember my ideals and not lose sight of them? 」

 

「Yes, that is going to be enough out of you. 」

 

Siluca smiled again.

 

「I will take care of all the rest. 」

 

Theo stared at Siluca for a while as she spoke so confidently.

 

「What is it? You want to add something to that? 」

 

Her purple eyes stared straight back at him.

 

「No, I will leave everything up to you, and I will do what you say. 」

「Thank you for your trust. 」

Siluca bowed respectfully to him, and then she left.

 

Theo took a deep breath, but only after he could no longer see her back. It felt as if the cold, tense air suddenly left his body all at once.

 

Theo once again turned his attention to the landscape outside the window.

 

(The only thing I have left to lose is my life. And in this day and age, no matter how choose to live my life, I cannot avoid the danger of losing it one day.

 

*          *          *

 

Siluca  also took a deep breath as she returned to her room.

 

She sat in a chair, and she stared blankly at the ceiling. Then she covered her face with her hands.

 

(What the hell am I even doing...?)

 

She muttered silently in her mind.

 

(I was in despair when it was decided that I would make a contract with the Earl of Artuk. Going all the way through the territory of Clovis which belongs to the Alliance was  just like  a provocation, so being attacked should have been nothing but an expected result. No, perhaps I was even expecting that all this time.)

 

If anything were to happen here, even the smallest, most insignificant of disturbances, it could have been a spark that would trigger the Great War, since it would be like setting fire to a cloth that has been soaked in oil.

 

In fact,  it was not only the case for Clovis,  but the Lords of Sevis were  also preparing for war, so naturally, the brunt of the fight turned towards Artuk.

 

Siluca does not believe that the Earl of Artuk, who is surrounded on three sides by enemy forces, could win against them when the war finally breaks out. If she were to serve the earl, there would be a high chance that she would have died as well, but if she was lucky enough, then if the Earl himself were to die first then her contract wit him would be cancelled, enabling her to happily return to the Magic University.

 

Either way, things would have probably ended very soon, and Siluca thought that this would have really been a preferrable outcome to her serving the Earl of Artuk for a long time.

 

However, on the way to Artuk, Siluca met a wandering Lord named Theo, and she felt that their meeting must have been a kind of destiny.

 

Even if he was a Lord of low rank or of little ability, I wanted to serve someone who had the right ideals as a Lord, since she felt that someone like that would be infinitely more worth making a contract with than the Earl of Artuk.

 

But still, even though the contract with the Earl had not been officially concluded, Siluca’s act violated the agreement, and now she was feeling guilty of involving Theo in her selfish act. The situation they were both in right now was terribly dangerous. One mistake and it was going to be all over.

 

However, it is true that she was acting out of desperation until she signed a contract with Theo, but all of her actions after that were well calculated.